By GottaLaff

Barry Blitt

Frank Rich:

Now that we have finally arrived at the do-or-die moment for Obama’s signature issue, we face the alarming prospect that his presidency could be toast if he doesn’t make good on a year’s worth of false starts. [...] The G.O.P. would be able to argue this fall, not without reason, that the party holding the White House and both houses of Congress cannot govern.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that Obama does eke out his victory. Republicans claim that if he does so by “ramming through” the bill with the Congressional reconciliation process, they will have another winning issue for November. On this, they are wrong. Their problem is not just their own hypocritical record on reconciliation [...] They’d also have to contend with this country’s congenitally short attention span. Once the health care fight is over and out of sight, it will be out of mind to most Americans. [...]

The 2010 election will instead be fought about the economy [...] The leadership shortfall we’ve witnessed during Obama’s yearlong health care march — typified by the missed deadlines, the foggy identification of his priorities, the sometimes abrupt shifts in political tone and strategy — won’t go away once the bill does. This weakness will remain unless and until the president himself corrects it.

Those who are unsympathetic or outright hostile to Obama frame his failures as an attempt to impose “socialism” on a conservative nation. The truth is that the Fox News right would believe this about any Democratic president [...]

The more serious debate about Obama is being conducted by neutral or sympathetic observers. [...]

But the buck stops with the president, not his chief of staff. And if there’s one note that runs through many of the theories as to why Obama has disappointed in Year One, it cuts to the heart of what had been his major strength: his ability to communicate a compelling narrative. In the campaign, that narrative, of change and hope, was powerful [...] In governing, Obama has yet to find a theme that is remotely as arresting to the majority of Americans who still like him and are desperate for him to succeed.

The problem is not necessarily that Obama is trying to do too much, but that there is no consistent, clear message to unite all that he is trying to do. [...]

Obama prides himself on not being ideological or partisan — of following, as he put it in his first prime-time presidential press conference, a “pragmatic agenda.” [...] To galvanize the nation, Obama needs to articulate a substantive belief system that’s built from his bedrock convictions. His presidency cannot be about the cool equanimity and intellectual command of his management style.

That he hasn’t done so can be attributed to his ingrained distrust of appearing partisan or, worse, a knee-jerk “liberal.” That is admirable in intellectual theory, but without a powerful vision to knit together his vision of America’s future, he comes off as a doctrinaire Democrat anyway. [...] If F.D.R. or Reagan could distill, coin and convey a credo “nonideological” enough to serve as an umbrella for all their goals and to attract lasting majority coalitions of disparate American constituencies, so can this gifted president. [...]

And so leadership on financial reform, as with health care, has been delegated to bipartisan Congressional negotiators poised to neuter it. [...] Since Obama offers no overarching narrative of what financial reform might really mean to Americans in their daily lives, Americans understandably assume the reforms will be too compromised or marginal to alter a system that leaves their incomes stagnant (at best) while bailed-out bankers return to partying like it’s 2007. [...]

This time Obama doesn’t have a year to arrive at his finest hour. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the clock runs out on Nov. 2.

Much more here.